The present invention relates to an improved monorail passenger and light freight system, including a vehicle and improved rail for such a system.
Railed-vehicle systems, such as monorails, have numerous benefits, particularly in overcrowded urban environments where the surface streets are congested with traffic, and traditional forms of mass transportation, such as buses, must compete for space with existing traffic. For example, a dedicated elevated guide way vehicle system operates above city streets and therefore is immune from traffic congestion. It provides a quick and convenient way for moving people around a city, and it actually helps to relieve traffic congestion.
However, existing elevated railed-vehicle systems have several characteristics that have precluded their wide acceptance throughout the world. First, known support structures used to elevate the guide way are heavy and excessively large making them expensive to construct and install. Such structures are difficult to prefabricate at a central manufacturing facility and then transport easily to the location where they will ultimately be installed. Accordingly, the support structures must be individually manufactured directly on the site where they will be used. This time and expense of manufacturing such structures is a primary contributor to the excessive costs of elevated rail systems. In addition, variations in weather, temperature, and environment at each individual support structure manufacturing site combined with variations associated with continuously having to move and set-up the manufacturing equipment at each site make it difficult to efficiently control the quality and consistency of each manufactured support structure.
Moreover, known guide rails and running paths are prone to accumulate snow and ice, which may adversely affect vehicle operation. Similarly, known bogie, vehicle frames, guide rails, and rail switching devices are complex and expensive to construct.
Thus, there remains a need for railed-vehicle systems that can be consistently and economically prefabricated off-site and easily moved to the installation site, that provide improved stabilizer rail and bogie designs, that provide improved switching devices, and that provide improved construction shapes, designs and materials for use in rail, vehicle, and vehicle components.